A bold move by two Boston City Councilors and four state Reps (all in Boston districts) could lead to huge improvements in the so-so city schools. It might also come to little.
Councilor John Connolly, who heads the body’s education committee, stands up to be shot at on this. The backing troops are Councilor Matt O’Malley and Reps Nick Collins, Ed Coppinger, Linda Dorcena Forry and Russell Holmes. When the citizens’ advisory group, in which they participated, re-dealt the school-assignment deck with minor revisions — redrawing zones or avoiding zones — this gang of six in effect said that was not enough.
The Quality Choice Plan they put up against the tweaks is just that. It stretches toward major education improvements as well as guaranteeing K2 seats close to home and setting up 16 citywide schools with more parent-desired features. It’s gutsy.
Speaking today on Left Ahead, Connolly stuck mostly to the big ideas. Click below for his half-hour show. He has kids in BPS and the last of my three just finished. We’re devoted to public education, but I feel pale indeed in the light of his passion as well as his belief that major improvements are possible in a short time.
He cites schools that have turned around in within two years. These shared methods and philosophies that can give teachers’ union pols the shakes — longer school days, principal/headmaster powers to pick and clear out teachers, and a lot more Innovation status schools.
Nominally,the city and school department are with a program of improving quality system-wide, as described on their related website. Perhaps it’s over two decades of performing stupid parent tricks to get my kids in the better schools in the system, but I am not expecting wholesale adoption of Quality Choices.
I also await the waves of not-invented-here reactions. So far, neither the Superintendent, nor the unions, nor even the Mayor has openly derided Connolly’s plan. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if that didn’t happen soon on several fronts. Connolly says he’s girded for diplomacy and worse if necessary.
Connolly knows his plan is vastly superior then yet another NEW, IMPROVED, SOCKO assignment scheme. He’s had numerous meetings with Superintendent Carol Johnson and various others pushing for his vision. He thinks he on the verge of getting endorsement for it from the citizens’ advisory committee (which should carry a lot of weight). He wants the works and at the very least hopes for and expects a plan that is a hybrid incorporating many of Quality Choices’ proposals.
Part of his vision includes inspiring people like himself to enroll their kids in BPS. Today’s system is over 80% poor and over 80% kids of color. While there are pockets of schools, such as in West Roxbury, that the current walking-distance and sibling assignment rule keep majority white/middle-class, he is well aware of the composition of the student body on average. Families put their kids in parochial and other private schools, moved out of Boston or signed up their kids for METCO to go to distant, tony, largely white schools. Here not-native-English speakers and recent immigrants join the underprivileged in most schools. Boston remains the primary staging ground for many.
As a public-school parent and in his Council position as well hearing from many in the city, Connolly know what distresses and annoys parents. Not being able to get into any of 10 school choices, being put on random waiting lists and having kids sent across the city to low-scoring schools are up there. The long-term goals are what parents have demanded for decades — very good to excellent schools of all levels in every neighborhood. Meanwhile, getting there may include such innovations as letting parents of from 2 to 11 total kids apply as a group to any under-selected school. These parent compacts would represent up to half a traditional kindergarten class, for example, under the assumption that they would work together to ensure higher quality classwork, as activist parents so often do.
Listen in as Connolly describes schools that have gone from the lowest rankings to ahead of 70% of the system within two years. He wants a lot, as in all schools to do that. Coupled with the 16 citywide schools with concentrations of the features most demanded by parents, he sees dramatic improvements in relatively short periods.
The man is impatient…with the right goals.
I have no idea what a “teachers’ union politician” is, but pretending that they are a separate breed from the educators from whom they emerged, from the educators who elected them, from the democracy-driven structure that develops the policies they implement is doing fools’ work. These shared methods and philosophies are those that people who actually know something about education know will fail Boston’s children. Why not be honest and say that these occasional amateurs are coming up with ideas that are popular and sound nice, but have been dismissed by the men and women who know what works?
It’s akin to stuffing my face with Little Debbie snack cakes, and dismissing “medical politicians” when someone tells me that the AMA advocates for a low-fat diet Sure, it’s easier to blame other people for difficult problems that don’t fall for easy solutions, but it takes a combination of stupidity and dishonesty to do so.
(By the way, Innovation Schools are encouraged and developed with union participation across the Commonwealth.)
Perhaps you should track the long-running contract negotiations between the teachers’ union reps, the city and the school administration. You’ll see politicians all around.
Plus, these folk who know something about education are in the thick of a foundering school system. John knows heaps about education and the BPS specifically. He’s not invested in protecting either the status quo or any one group. His plan is well received for good reasons.
He’s all for getting a school’s faculty to buy into innovation status and such (60% is the minimum, I understand). Yet he also believes in leadership including the principal/headmaster instead of literalism.
By the bye, when I chaired the board of a large church, I told the group to accept that they were politicians in that role. I expected each of us to build and communicate with our own constituencies. Several were initially offended by the term, but all quickly embraced the idea and each came with ideas and spread our decisions to their folk. Being a pol does not have to be bad.